Speaker

Matthew Bailey is Professor of Spanish & Head of the Department of Romance Languages at Washington Lee University, and works on the literature and culture of medieval Spain, epic narrative, and orality and literacy in medieval thought and expression. He is visiting Bristol as part of a collaboration on the project 'Charlemagne, A European Icon: Charlemagne in Spain' .

The lecture will examine the evolution of the narrative tradition relating Charlemagne's historic eighth-century incursion into Spain in the chronicles and popular narratives of Christian Spain, from the eleventh-century "Nota Emilianense," through the Latin and Romance chronicles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the process of reviewing the evolution of this narrative tradition, a portrait of Charlemagne emerges as a threat to Spanish sovereignty and as a stimulus for a heroic narrative of Spanish resistance to French domination. This process, initiating with an historical event, culminates with the entirely fantastical narrative of the deeds of the young Cid.